 High school students in Daejeon celebrate by throwing flour at each other during a graduation event. The education ministry is planning to get policemen on school grounds to fight unnecessary and deviant behavior during and after graduation events this year. / Korea Times file |
By Han Sang-hee
A school graduation may be the last place people would expect to find policemen on guard, but when annual celebrations are smeared with excessive pranks, including nudity, there can be no exception.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is planning to get policemen on school grounds to combat unnecessary and deviant behavior during and after graduation events this year.
Some 110,000 schools scattered around the nation have given their graduation schedules to the National Police Agency, enabling the ministry and police to patrol grounds and isolated areas near the school.
The ministry’s decision came after ugly graduation rituals occurred last year. Some students took the rituals to the extremes: some tore school uniforms, while others threw eggs and flour at each other. A handful took it a bit overboard.
A video and photos of high school students forcing middle schoolers to take off their clothes resulted in calls for necessary measures from both parents and fellow students. The Ilsan Police Department eventually questioned eight high school students over whether they forced the middle school students to take off their clothes and assaulted them at an isolated location near the school last year.
``Teachers try to prevent such incidents, but the students usually act this way after the official event so it’s hard to find and punish them,’’ said Kim Joo-yeon, 28, a teacher at Hongcheon High School in Gangwon Province.
Most of the schools agree that something has to be done, and if it takes police to stop it, then they will have to open their gates to do it.
``We try to warn students to stop such rituals but some of them just do them anyway. Many of them believe it as something as a release, now that they have finished one phase of their lives, they celebrate it in their own way,’’ said another teacher from a middle school in southern Seoul.
Education and psychology experts see this as a form of releasing stress: something many young students go through due to their studies and peers.
``Because Korean students suffer from immense stress with their studies at a young age, there are not many channels where they can release such emotions. Such violent behavior seems to have took a wrong turn as a way to experience that temporary feeling of freedom,’’ said Kim Bong-hwan, a professor at the department of education at Sookmyung University.
According to the ministry, throwing eggs and flour at others can be categorized as physical violence, while forcing someone to take off their clothes and performing group punishment can be charged as compulsory assault.
``Seniors forcing juniors to take off their clothes and uploading videos and photos of them is not just a way of departing from their school years, but a crime. It’s important for them to realize this through necessary procedure. We will do our best to prevent such ugly rituals and traditions this year,’’ said Oh Seung-keol, director of school life and culture team, school policy bureau under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
In line with the efforts in trying to make school graduations as something special and memorable, the ministry has also released a booklet that covers interesting events that could make the annual ceremony a special one, such as watching musicals, planting trees and making time capsules.
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